"Waiting for review", "aged away" and "disputed" do not count. Substract those from the total, count only helpful vs declined. You have a 66% flag approval rate. Not great.
– yiviMar 7 '19 at 14:17

Sorry, my tag edit was incorrect because the percentage is not an official stat displayed by the system.
– user247702Mar 7 '19 at 14:19

@yivi I don't think we have agreement on if disputed counts or not. It would be unfair in my opinion to not count disputed close and NAA flags as unsuccesful, as these usually don't get declined, but either disputed or marked helpful, except if a mod somehow becomes involved.
– Erik AMar 7 '19 at 14:22

@yivi Thanks for helping me understand it. And I know it is not great, but all I need to do is be vigilant with my flags to get it up as I only have 6 total flags that were accepted/declined
– user10892372Mar 7 '19 at 14:23

If anything, you want your declined flags as low as possible. For reference: I have over 12K of raised flags, with 50 declined.
– reneMar 7 '19 at 14:25

@rene Alright. Got 2 right now declined, I'll just be careful as possible.
– user10892372Mar 7 '19 at 14:26

4

@Erik I think it's appropriate to discount disputed flags. Those are disputed when there is no agreement, so the final decision could have gone either way, or when mods think the issue borderline enough as to not warrant a decline. When I've seen this stat bandied about, it always took disputed flags out of consideration. Put simply: only helpful and declined count. But maybe I'm wrong.
– yiviMar 7 '19 at 14:26

@yivi if you talk about it in the mathematical sense, percentage of successful flags implies the divisor is the total amount of flags, so it's already borderline incorrect to remove the flags that got aged away from the equation. But I guess there's just no formal definition.
– Erik AMar 7 '19 at 14:32

@ErikA But would it make sense to do that? Because the aged away/pending flags aren't really your fault at all. But mathematically it is correct, but I would not see it that way.
– user10892372Mar 7 '19 at 14:38

1

@JerryD It's a statistic, not an assessment of value. Statistics are no-one's fault, they just are. For bans, however, only declined flags count.
– Erik AMar 7 '19 at 14:39

@ErikA You can be banned for having flags declined? What is the threshold?
– user10892372Mar 7 '19 at 14:42

@JerryD You can get suspended from flagging for a while, not banned from the entire site. The threshold or formula used is not public knowledge, but we do know disputed flags don't count.
– Erik AMar 7 '19 at 14:44

1

@JerryD Not as far as I know, no. Afaik only declined flags count.
– Erik AMar 7 '19 at 14:50

1

@ErikA actually, the formula for flag ban is documented: "If a user casts at least 10 flags a week, and at least 25% of their flags from the past 7 days were declined, they're blocked from flagging anything." (from Shog9's answer on MSE)
– Andrew T.Mar 8 '19 at 2:34

1

The system lets you know when your flagging has been unhelpful, @Amit. If there’s something really egregious, demonstrating a fundamental understanding of e.g. the purpose of spam flags, a moderator will reach out to you. Don’t focus on the historical percentages. They are a lot less important than what you’re doing now. If most of your recent flags are marked helpful, you are being helpful.
– Cody Gray♦Mar 8 '19 at 21:52

1 Answer
1

Typically the value is calculated using only the helpful and declined values, e.g. in the calculation in "Overall Percentage of Helpful Flags". Obviously flags waiting for review can't count because no decision has been made. Flags which aged away, also, wouldn't count for the same reason. Likewise, flags which you have personally retracted would not count towards the value either.

Helpful means a mod specifically marked the flag as helpful, or the action that you were suggesting through a flag was taken by the community.

Declined means that a mod specifically declined the flag.

Disputed basically means neither happened. A mod never actually looked at the flag and declined it, but the action you suggested wasn't taken in response to the flag either. This can happen in any number of cases; certain flags are marked disputed when the post is edited; non-moderator users can choose not to act on a flag (either through the 10k tools page (which has since been removed) or through certain review queues) which disputes a flag, etc.

My ModFlaggerStats userscript calculates users' declined flag % instead, as a percentage of declined over total flags. This allows a mod to be able to sort flags by the combined total rank of the flags on the post. You could install it to see your own rank "tier" on your main profile page as long as you have a minimum of 10 post flags.
– Samuel Liew♦Mar 7 '19 at 20:52

@SamuelLiew - I installed GreaseMonkey and "Mod flagger status" appears as a script on my profile page, but I don't seem to see any difference. Where should I see the new information?
– Wai Ha LeeMar 7 '19 at 21:24

@SamuelLiew - Huh. It shows with TamperMonkey on Chrome, but not with GreaseMonkey on Firefox - i.stack.imgur.com/QlAxG.png I've been meaning to switch to Chrome for a while now - perhaps user scripts will be what pushes me over the edge. :)
– Wai Ha LeeMar 7 '19 at 22:35